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Month: August 2017

This morning, Thursday, August 31st, I fished a multi -species trip on Lake Belton with SD Hearn Jr. of Temple. SD specifically requested Belton as it will be the lake he most likely fishes on his own with his new boat.

SD Hearne is a new fishing boat owner who asked me to “show him the ropes” on Lake Belton so he and his 7- and 12-year-old sons could put a few fish in the boat on their own going forward.

SD recently purchased a 19 1/2 foot aluminum V-hull from Rockwall Marine and chose to hire me so he could see how the boat, trolling motor, and sonar all work together in the pursuit of fish.

We originally had this trip scheduled for Monday, but Hurricane Harvey changed those plans. Although the rain stopped that day, the low pressure and winds from the NE caused me to push this trip back to a time with more stable weather.

Since learning to fish, not catching a bunch of fish, was the goal, I employed more techniques and covered more of the lake than I normally would have in order to give SD as much of an exposure as a morning would allow.

We began searching for topwater action under lowlight conditions, followed by downrigging. The downrigging produced fish and also lead us to fish that were heavily concentrated on bottom and therefore could be jigged for. Hence, we jigged for white bass, then used blade baits in a horizontal presentation to reach beyond the area directly beneath the boat once the vertical jigging slacked off.

In all, we found three productive areas, and ran sonar over a number of other areas that we either chose not to fish, or which did not produce once we began probing.

By the time five hours had rolled by, we managed to put 42 fish in the boat, and added another sunfish at dockside as I explained yet another tactic that I thought SD’s seven-year-old would take to. While on the lake, our catch included exactly 39 white bass, two hybrid striper, and one largemouth bass.

**Area vic 1126 – made three “short hops” in this same vicinity for heavily schooled, bottom-oriented white bass in the 0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-year class taken via slabs with an easing tactic and with bladebaits using a lift-drop tactic.

This morning I had the pleasure of fishing with a 10-year-old young man, Keyonte’ Charleston, who first came out with me last week and caught the first fish of his life through the SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) program. Keyonte’ enjoyed the outing so much that his mom enrolled him in the Ft. Hood SKIESUnlimited program and signed up for a “Fishing 101” trip.

Keyonte’ Charleston with the largest of the 95 fish we landed this morning, including 79 white bass, 1 largemouth bass, and 15 sunfish. The 9-10am window was our most productive as we sat over a moderately aggressive school of white bass for nearly an hour and landed 41 fish from out of that school using tailspinners.

With a falling barometer in advance of the arrival of Hurricane Harvey, a gentle ENE breeze, and grey skies greeting us during an obscured sunrise this morning, we found the bite, which started right around 7am, very aggressive and longer than the 2 hour feed that had occurred Tuesday through Thursday this week. As the skies got brighter (although through 100% cloud cover), the third hour of the day turned out to be our most productive.

We landed 20 fish in our first hour mainly via downrigging, 19 fish in our second hour mainly on bladebaits, and 41 fish in our third hour mainly on tailspinners with some cleanup duty via downriggers as the bite softened. By 10:30am, the bite was done. Keyonte’ then specifically requested that we do some sunfishing, as we had only pursued white bass up to this point. With exactly 80 fish in the boat, we put the downrigger rods, tailspinner rods, and bladebait rods away and went up shallow for sunfish.

The sunfish were also very active, as the wind and waves brought them further out from the cover they would typically be buried into during brighter, calmer conditions. Keyonte’ landed an additional 15 sunfish in under a half-hour, taking his tally to 95 fish by the time we spotted his mom pulling into the parking lot to pick him up.

I was really impressed with how quickly Keyonte’ picked up on several skills. He handled the rigging of the downriggers very deftly and he learned to cast with spinning gear on this trip. After about 4 “work the bugs out” casts, he was effectively working a 1/2 ounce bladebait in 32 feet of water right along side me and was catching fish steadily.

What I do on the water during a SKIFF trip and a SKIESUnlimited Fishing 101 trip are identical. SKIFF trips are available free of charge when kids are separated from their military parent due to that parent’s military duty obligations; kids are eligible for one trip per parent’s absence. The SKIESUnlimited program is fee-based, however, when a parent is deployed families may obtain credit towards activities and use that credit before paying out of pocket.

SKIESUnlimited stands for Schools of Knowledge, Inspiration, Exploration, and Skills.

SKIESUnlimited offers dozens of activities for military and Department of Defense kids of all ages, ranging from gymnastics to piano lessons, from academic tutoring to various forms of dance, and more. Monetary credit for such courses is available for children whose military parents are deployed.

To participate in such courses, children must first be registered with Child and Youth Services.

Registration is free and is accomplished by contacting Parent Central Services at 254-287-8029.

Once registered, parents may go online to enroll their children for the myriad courses available.

TALLY: 95 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:00am

End Time: 11:00am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp: 86.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: ENE8-10

Sky Conditions: 90% grey cloud cover the entire trip; light sprinkle as I drove to the launch around 6:15a

This morning, Thursday, 24 August, I fished a second multi-species trip on Stillhouse Hollow with Bill Johnston and two of his grandkids, Webb and Cyan Johnston. These same two grandchildren came out with me this past Monday, as well.

Cyan and Webb Johnston with a nice pair of white bass taken while the fish were most active during our first 75 minutes on the water this morning, from 7:00 to 8:15 am.

Webb, age 4, is from New Orleans, LA, and Cyan, age 7, lives in Austin, TX. Even after bearing with me through a very slow morning of fishing on Monday, the kids were just as excited to get our adventure underway this morning.

The last thing I wanted to do was to give the kids two slow trips back-to-back, yet, the potential was certainly there thanks to a wrinkle in the weather that occurred yesterday. Around 2pm, our winds which began from the SW, then went calm at midday, turned out of the NE while thunderstorms began to erupt all across central Texas. We got a 4-hour long, 0.35 inch rain event before evening cooling eliminated the showers. The wind shift is what concerned me.

Typically summertime fish do best on long, stable stretches of weather, and wrinkles either really fire them up or really turn them off. So, this morning was a gamble that turned out well for us.

I had found 3 distinct locations holding fish on Tuesday of this week, and these same areas produced again yesterday, so, that is where we started our hunt for fish today.

I opted for downriggers (versus a horizontal casting approach using bladebaits which produced so well yesterday), mainly due to the kids’ limited manual dexterity and how finicky the fish can be about presentations under the conditions we had this morning. This decision turned out well, as the kids enjoyed an action packed 2 hours of catching singles, doubles, and even 2 sets of triples with 0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-year class fish aggressively rising out of the depths to inspect and strike our Pet Spoons presented on 3-armed umbrella rigs.

By the time 75 minutes had gone by we’d already boated 29 fish (3 more than during our 4-hour outing on Monday). By the 2.5 hour mark we’d taken that tally up to 47 fish, including 45 white bass, 1 drum, and 1 largemouth. I was around this time (~9:30am) that the white bass fishing really fell off sharply. I looked over several areas with sonar and saw little.

We spent our final 30+ minutes on the water targeting sunfish up shallow at the kids’ request. They definitely retained their skills from Monday’s trip and did really well on setting the hook in a timely manner and with just the right amount of “umpf” to set the hook without overdoing it and send these small fish sailing through the air!

We landed exactly 23 sunfish, including longears and bluegills, before the novelty wore off and the donuts ran out. Bill and I both knew it was time to wrap it up.

TALLY: 70 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:55am

End Time: 10:40am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp: 85.9F

Wind Speed & Direction: ENE6

Sky Conditions: 60% grey cloud cover the entire trip; light sprinkle as I drove to the launch around 6:15a

Corey Alexander with one of the fish we downrigged for at the second area we fished this morning.

Anthony is a fellow small businessman who owns and operates Kid’s X-pression Learning Center in Killeen. Corey works as a mail handler on Fort Hood, supporting the Warrior Transition Unit (WTU).

Anthony was presented with a fishing gift certificate by his kids and his father and today was the day he decided to cash it in.

We linked up at 7:00a and were into our first fish by 7:15am. The bite went strong until 9:00a, then got weaker but continued until 9:30a, then tapered slowly out to nil by 11:00a.

We fished 3 areas in much the same fashion. When the sun and wind conditions were right at our first area, we took advantage of surface-feeding largemouth and sight cast to them with good success by matching our presentation to the small shad these fish were feeding on. When these fish disappeared, we either downrigged or cast bladebaits for the abundant white bass in the area.

One of the white bass Anthony landed just before the bite tapered off at this first area we fished was the largest white bass I’ve had a client land in several weeks. This white bass measured 15 3/8 inches, thus qualifying Anthony for a TPWD “Big Fish” award. A “Big Fish” award is earned when an angler catches a particular species of gamefish and that gamefish’s length exceeds a minimum length established for that species by TPWD. For example, the minimum length for white bass is 15″; the minimum length for largemouth bass is 24″, etc. When 5 species of freshwater fish exceeding the “Big Fish” minimum lengths are captured, the angler then qualifies for a TPWD “Elite Angler” status.

At our second area, we were drawn to some scant topwater action seen across the nearly calm surface. We found more scattered white bass and far less topwater action, and primarily downrigged until we found heavily concentrated white bass on bottom, which we threw bladebaits at.

By the time we got to our third area, the bite had slowed to a crawl. We stopped just once to throw bladebaits after seeing the suspended white bass here generally refuse our downrigged offerings 9 times out of 10.

We put a total of 52 fish in the boat today, with a few missed opportunities on the topwater largemouth as the fellows went through the learning curve of accurately casting and promptly retrieving on these skittish surface feeders.

This morning, Tuesday, 22 August, I fished the season’s 18th SKIFF program trip with the Minchew family currently stationed at Fort Hood.

9-year-old Julia Minchew landed this nice Stillhouse white bass in our first hour on the water during this morning’s SKIFF trip.

6-year-old Rachel Minchew held on tight as this big ol’ white bass gave her a run for her money.

Donna Minchew contacted me as her husband, a US Army major, was completing a deployment to Afghanistan where he served as an information operations officer. She hoped to get her girls, 6-year-old Rachel and 9-year-old Julia, out fishing before school went back in session and life suddenly got much busier.

SKIFF stands for “Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun”. SKIFF provides free fishing trips to the children of soldiers separate from their kids due to duty requirements. “Homefront” spouses with a husband or wife away from home on military duty (not just deployments) are welcomed to call me at 254.368.7411 to arrange for free 4-hour outing for your children. Homefront parents are always welcome to attend, but are equally welcome to take some downtime from their own children and leave them in my care for this time on the water. This is all made possible through the sponsorship and work of the Austin Fly Fishers and the supportive allies they have developed along the way.

We met at 7:00am on Stillhouse Hollow. Given the girls’ ages and what their mom had relayed to me about their prior experience, I came prepared primarily to downrig, then to do some sunfishing, and, possibly, to try some vertical jigging if the fish cooperated.

We were fortunate this morning to encounter some topwater action driven by largemouth bass as they fed on shad on and near the surface. This gave away the location of bait, and the bait led us to handsome quantities of white bass suspended at 25-35 feet beneath the surface and ready to eat.

We had 90 solid minutes of non-stop action catching singles and doubles on our 3-armed umbrella rigs catching white bass in the 0-, 1-, and 2-year classes, as well as a few small largemouth mixed in. After this peak feed ended around 8:30am, we continued riding the curve as the fish wound down for another hour. By the time the white bass quit, we’d landed 36 fish and missed a few more.

We invested the remainder of the time introducing the girls to fishing for sunfish using bream rods. The girls both did very well at this, landing longear, bluegill, redear, and green sunfish — 14 in all — before the sun got hot and it was time to head in.

We landed exactly 50 fish this morning. The girls shared early in the trip that they had grown accustomed to sleeping in over the summer and that getting up early was a bit painful. When all was said and done, they were glad they got up early this morning.

This morning, Monday, 21 August, I fished a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with Dr. Bill Johnston and two of his grandchildren, 7-year-old Cyan Johnston and her cousin, 4-year-old Webb Johnston. We fished Stillhouse for a combination of white bass and sunfish.

After winning rights to the first white bass of the day via a victory at “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, Cyan landed this nice 13″ class white bass from out of 36 feet of water on downrigged Pet Spoons.

Shortly after Cyan landed her first fish, Webb came up with this largemouth which fell for the same rig our white bass did.

The two species we pursued seemed to be on opposite ends of the feeding spectrum today in that the sunfish were very easy and the white bass were very tough.

Given the kids’ ages and limited experience, I wanted to go for “instant gratification” and therefore elected to pursue sunfish right away. We hit two areas and easily put 20 sunfish in the boat, including bluegill, green, and longear sunfish. All were caught in shallow, cover-filled water with slipfloats.

When the novelty of sunfishing began to wear off, we re-tooled and headed out to deep, open water in pursuit of white bass.

My “Kids Fish, Too!” trips are a bit shorter and less expensive than adult trips, in that I usually plan for 3.5 hours on the water (if the kids last that long).

We put in about 80 minutes on sunfish, and I reserved the balance of our time for white bass. Before we put our lines in the water for the whites, I let the kids know that the fishing would involve longer wait times in between fish than the sunfish did.

As we got going at our first area, we saw multiple, abundant schools of white bass on sonar and adjusted the depth of our downriggers accordingly. We went over school after school after school and only on a handful of occasions saw fish move from where they were suspended, upwards in the water column to investigate the downrigger balls as they passed by. Normally, fish that move to the balls will strike, and those that stay “hunkered down” will not. Long story short, we landed only 1 largemouth and 5 white bass, and had a few additional fish that came off during the fight.

I moved to three other locations, finding suspended white bass at two of them, and finding those white bass in the same negative mood as those we encountered at the first area we probed.

This was atypically slow given our weather conditions. Regardless, Cyan proclaimed a number of times that this was the “best day of her life”, and that the solar eclipse only made it that much better! The kids were real troopers, hanging with me for an extra 30 minutes right through 11am as we tried valiantly to end on a strong note with “just one more” fish in the boat. That fish was a 1.5 pound largemouth which Webb hooked in 36 feet of water on a tailspinner, only to have it rocket to the surface and throw the lure free as we all watched it leap just 4 feet off the starboard gunwale.

We’ll all be trying our luck again this coming Thursday as we head out to Lake Belton for a change of scenery, weather permitting.

This past Saturday morning I welcomed aboard Mr. Robbie Hohhertz and his 13-year-old son, Ethan, of Holland, TX, along with Ethan’s cousin, Ryder Hohhertz of Moody, TX. Ethan’s mom, Charity, set this trip up for this crew in celebration of Ethan’s 13th birthday.

From left: Ryder, Robbie, and Ethan Hohhertz came out for a morning of multi-species fishing on Stillhouse Hollow in celebration of Ethan’s 13th birthday. This crew landed 61 white bass, 2 largemouth, and 1 drum in about 5 hours of fishing.

As has been the case all week this week, the first 45 minutes or so from 7-8 am has been pretty slow. This has been the case both with and without cloud cover at sunrise.

Around 8 am, things started happening, with a few terns seen working bait on the surface, shad schools moving around in panic mode, bass and gar working the surface routinely, etc. During this time we enjoyed our fastest 45 minutes of fishing on downriggers, routinely taking singles and doubles with the balls set around 28 feet over a 30-36 foot bottom. When this action slowed, all of the other natural signs slowed, as well.

From 9 – 10:45am we fished two additional areas and really had to work at it and comb over fish-holding water a number of times to get the fish we found to bite. Finding fish was not the issue — I was seeing suspended schools of white bass every few minutes, but even with our baits placed very precisely, it was necessary to go over a lot of fish to get just one or two to come up and strike. As of 10:45, we’d put 1 drum, 2 largemouth, and 32 white bass in the boat.

I changed locations at 10:45, heading back to near where the fish had fed well from 8-9 am to see if they might turn on again, given that that feed was pretty brief.

As I neared the area, a small flock of 4 terns which were working bait helped boost my confidence that our trip was not yet over. I ran sonar very slowly over the broad area the terns were working and found a large, bottom-hugging school of white bass in about 32 feet of water. I put the Ulterra in Spot Lock mode after using the i-Pilot Link function on my Humminbird Solix to pinpoint the fish and send the trolling motor to the exact location those fish appeared at on bottom as shown on sonar. The electronic magic worked and we were onto fish in no time. Aided by the thumper, white bass responded well to our vertically presented tailspinners.

When this bite ran its course, I repeated this procedure and locked onto a second school of fish about 7-8 boat lengths away and we got into our second and final group of whites on the tailspinners. In the 75 minutes that transpired after sighting the terns, we took our tally from 35 fish up to 64 fish, and ended the trip with a bang instead of a whimper.

Based on slow starts over the past few morning related to grey cloud cover in the eastern sky, I bumped our start time back a bit to 7:00am.

We still got off to a bit of a slow start, but, I believe that was mainly due to the calm wind conditions we encountered just after sunrise. Once the winds began and then built and sustained at 11-13 mph, the bite ramped up and stayed solid through 11:15am.

We fished 3 areas very thoroughly this morning. The first was a deep breakline, and the last two were cove mouths — all produced a bit more that the one before it as the bite peaked around 10am.

There were few instances this morning when fish were poised such that we could hover atop them and vertically jig for them. I stopped to do this only twice and only the first attempt panned out. The second group of heavily schooled bottom-hugging fish I found ignored slow tailspinner, fast slabs, and even horizontally presented bladebaits — we literally zeroed on these attempts.

Each time I stopped we had been successfully downrigging, and the reason I stopped was because I believed I could catch more fish in less time and with less hassle via jigging than was involved with the downriggers. When this turned out not to be the case we went back to “dance with who brung us” and relied heavily on the downriggers today.

Of the 47 fish we landed today, 1 was a largemouth and 46 were white bass with most being 1- and 2-year class fish. The 3-armed umbrella rig with Pet Spoons trailing was the ticket.

Because the bite went late this morning and Hiram and Mashell were enjoying themselves, I extended our trip an extra 30 minutes to fish the bite to completion. As we wrapped up, Hiram said several times how much the two of them enjoyed the outing; Mashell added that she’d like to come again when the weather cools and the fish begin to “feed up” for the winter (referring back to when I pointed out how productive the window of time between the 2nd week of November and the 3rd week of December typically is).

This past Thursday morning I fished a SKIESUnlimited trip with Mrs. Tania Culpepper and her two children, 10-year-old Jasmine, and 5-year old Tristan.

Jasmine Culpepper went from rookie to technically capable all in one trip today. She was expertly handling the rigging of our downriggers and bringing in the white bass once they turned on about midway through the morning.

Like most 5 or 6 year olds, Tristan did great up until the sun got hot, then he got to asking about when lunch time was going to be. He caught his fair share of fish today, as well.

Neither Tristan nor Jasmine had ever landed a fish in their lives before, so I had my work cut out for me today.

As was the case yesterday, we had some lingering grey cloud cover completely obscuring sunrise and beyond thus preventing a sudden brightening of the sky and that triggering of the fish to begin feeding that comes with it. So, the bite got off to a slow start and slowly ramped up with a peak at around 9:00 to 9:45.

This morning we ran sonar over four distinct areas finding fish at the last three of those four areas and really getting into them just at the last area we fished. Between fishing the first two areas for white bass and the last two areas for white bass, we went up shallow and inserted a bit of sunfishing into the agenda while waiting for the skies to clear and brighten.

The kids did really well at everything I showed them. I was really impressed how Tristan remembered the button push sequence on my downriggers necessary to get them deployed to the correct depth after showing him this just one time.

Jasmine essentially operated autonomously after I showed her how to rig everything on the downriggers from start to finish just two or three times. She untangled the rigs if they needed to be untangled, stripped out the right amount of line that the rigs were supposed to trail behind the boat, put the fishing line into the downrigger release clip, set the downrigger balls to the correct depth, and correctly tensioned the fishing rods so we would not miss a bite.

When all was said and done, the kids (and mom) put exactly 45 fish in the boat. Just under half of these were a mix of bluegill sunfish, longear sunfish, and bluegill sunfish, with the balance consisting of a mix of one, two, and three – year class white bass.

SKIESUnlimited stands for Schools of Knowledge, Inspiration, Exploration, and Skills.

SKIESUnlimited offers dozens of activities for military and Department of Defense kids of all ages, ranging from gymnastics to piano lessons, from academic tutoring to various forms of dance, and more. Monetary credit for such courses is available for children whose military parents are deployed.

To participate in such courses, children must first be registered with Child and Youth Services. Registration is free and is accomplished by contacting Parent Central Services at 254-287-8029. Once registered, parents may go online to enroll their children for the myriad courses available.

This morning, Wednesday, August 16th, I conducted the 17th SKIFF program trip of the 2017 season. Joining me today was 10-year-old Keyonte’ Charleston. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I took his younger brother, Jayvion Charleston, on a SKIFF trip just last week. We fished on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.

This 13 1/8″ white bass was the first fish of 10-year-old Keyonte’ Charleston’s life. It earned him a TPWD “First Fish Award”. Mr. Dave Hill of the Austin Fly Fishers, sponsors of the SKIFF Program, came along as a capable first mate. Dave holds up 4 fingers indicating Keyonte”s landing of 4 fish all at the same time, 3 fish on one rod immediately followed by 1 fish on another.

Keyonte”s father, SSG Christopher Charleston, is a Cavalry scout currently deployed to South Korea.

Keyonte’ showed up this morning with a big smile that never went away in 4 hours of fishing, even during some slow times at the start of the trip when the sun was hidden by clouds and the fish weren’t yet playing their A-game.

Also showing up this morning was special guest Mr. Dave Hill of the Austin Fly Fishers. Dave and Manuel Pena are the two men who carry the lion’s share of the fundraising and donation work behind the scenes that make SKIFF happen. It was great to have capable help onboard to rig lines, undo tangles and unhook fish.

Prior to this trip, Keyonte’ had never before caught a fish. He has watched all manner of fishing shows, he has studied fish behavior and knew about the behavior of various sorts of fish, and he even owns his own fishing rod and reel (which mom got him for his most recent birthday), but, despite all of that, he had never caught a fish.

Well, he ended that drought in a big way this morning. As we got our lines in the water (2 downriggers, each equipped with a 3-armed umbrella rig) and downrigged across the mouth of a cove near where an old streambed and the old Lampasas River channel join, sonar revealed a nice school of fish holding just below the level our downrigger balls were set at. The starboard rod went off first with a triple (3 fish at a time). As we moved a few yards further, the port rod went off as well with a double. Keyonte’ landed the triple, then had one of the fish on the double drop off, so, we wound up with 4 of those 5 fish on the “fish counter”, but, what a way to land your first fish! This scenario earned Keyonte’ a TPWD “First Fish Award”.

We went on to fish 2 more areas, each producing better than the one before, and taking our fish count up to 27 fish by 10am. At this point, I switched gears and introduced Keyonte’ to sunfishing with a bream pole. He landed 4 bluegill sunfish before we had to make the rough ride across open water to get back to his mom on time at 10:45.

Yes, lightning struck twice — both Charleston boys landed the first fish of their lives just days apart!

“Homefront” spouses with a husband or wife away from home on military duty (not just deployments) are welcomed to call me at 254.368.7411 to arrange for free 4-hour outing for your children. Homefront parents are always welcome to attend, but are equally welcome to take some downtime from their own children and leave them in my care for this time on the water. This is all made possible through the sponsorship and work of the Austin Fly Fishers and the supportive allies they have developed along the way.